Strands of hair could be key to unsolved murder case

Detectives investigating the murder of a seamstress say they are working on a significant forensic breakthrough on the fifth anniversary of her death.

Heather Barnett's mutilated body was found in the bathroom of her home, with hair belonging to someone else placed in her right hand.

Police say today that scientific analysis of the 9cm (3.5 inch) strands revealed where the person they came from had travelled, in the weeks before the hair was cut. It also showed they had changed their diet twice in the preceding three months.

The body of Barnett, 48, was found by her son Terry, then 14, and daughter Caitlin, then 11, when they came home from school to the flat in the Charminster area of Bournemouth on November 12, 2002.

She had been hit over the head with a hammer-like object and stabbed several times.

Chemical and isotope analysis on the hair by Stuart Black, an expert in environmental radioactivity at Reading University, showed its owner lived in the UK but visited the Valencia-Almeria area of eastern Spain, and/or the Marseilles-Perpignan area of southern France for up to six days, roughly 11 weeks before it was cut. The hair's owner also travelled to Tampa, Florida, for eight days about two and a half weeks before the hair was cut.

Detective Superintendent Mark Cooper, of Dorset police, said: "The results of the analysis on the hair are a very exciting and very significant development."

Police are still investigating a possible link between the murder and the disappearance of Elisa Claps, a 16-year old Italian who vanished in her home town of Potenza on September 12, 1993. Her body was never found.

Italian detectives have reopened the case and Dorset officers are to appear on Italian television on a programme similar to the BBC's Crimewatch.

Speaking about the murder for the first time, Caitlin said: "The day when I came home from school was the most earth-shattering day of my life and the memories will live with me forever.

"Nothing anyone can do can bring my mum back to my brother and I. But I want the public to help the police to catch the person who did this to her and stop it happening to anyone else."

Barnett's brother Ben said he was worried the killer might be targeting someone else in the Bournemouth area: "The results of the analysis of the strands of cut hair found in Heather's hand could be the last piece of the puzzle that would take this murderer out of society."